nsideration. The Foreign Office might very
properly act as an intermediary to bring the two parties together.

Finally, before leaving this branch of the subject, it is to be observed
that the difficulty of obtaining free labour has occurred elsewhere than
in the Portuguese possessions. It has generally admitted, at all events,
of a partial solution if the labourers are well treated and adequately
paid. Portuguese experience points to a similar conclusion. Mr.
Smallbones, writing on September 23, 1912, quotes the report of the
manager of the Lobito railway, in which the latter, after stating that
he has had no difficulty in obtaining all the labour he has required,
adds, "I attribute the facility in obtaining so large a supply of
labour, relatively cheaply, to the good food we supply them with, and
chiefly to the regularity with which payments in cash are effected, and
also to the justice with which they are treated."

The question of repatriation remains to be treated. It must, of course,
be remembered that repatriation is an act of justice to the men already
enslaved, but that, by itself, it does little or nothing towards solving
the main difficulties of the slavery problem. Mr. Wingfield, writing to
Sir Edward Grey on August 24, 1912, relates a conversation he had had
with Senhor Vasconcellos. "His Excellency first observed that they were
generally subjected to severe criticism in England, and said to be
fostering slavery because they did not at once repatriate all natives
who had served the term of their original contracts. Now they were
blamed for the misfortunes which resulted from their endeavour to act as
England was always suggesting that they should act!" His Excellency made
what Parliamentarians would call a good debating point, but the
complaint is obviously more specious than real, for what people in
England expect is not merely that the slaves should, if they wish it, be
repatriated, but that the repatriation should be conducted under
reasonably humane conditions. For the purposes of the present argument
it is needless to inquire whether the ghastly story adopted by the
Anti-Slavery Society on the strength of a statement in a Portuguese
newspaper, but denied by the Portuguese Government, that the corpses of
fifty repatriated men who had died of starvation were at one time to be
seen lying about in the outskirts of Benguella, be true or false.
Independently of this incident, all the evidence goes to show th